Waterfall Network Launches Mainnet with 12,777 TPS Throughput

Waterfall Network, a layer-1 protocol, has launched its mainnet in July 2024, marking a significant departure from traditional blockchain architectures. The protocol implements a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) as its foundational ledger, a non-linear data structure that arranges blocks as vertices in a directed graph. This approach eliminates the need for global sequencing at the time of transaction creation, allowing the ledger to evolve as a concurrent graph of interlinked blocks growing in multiple directions.

Unlike earlier DAG systems, Waterfall Network does not entirely discard linear ordering. Instead, it separates concerns across two subsystems: the Shard Network and the Coordinating Network. The Shard Network, which has a DAG structure, scales horizontally using hierarchical fractal sharding. Each shard can split into smaller subshards as demand grows, allowing transactions to be handled independently. However, all shards ultimately sync to a shared global state. The Coordinating Network finalizes transactions from the DAG by selecting spine blocks and putting them in sequence to ensure network-wide consistency. This design allows Waterfall to process transactions in parallel while maintaining a global state without overloading any single part of the network.

Waterfall Network's validator design is another key feature that sets it apart. During benchmarking by Chainspect, Waterfall reached a peak throughput of 12,777 transactions per second (TPS), outperforming high-speed EVM-based competitors. Its validator framework supports up to 1.5 million participants, and running a validator requires only 2-core CPUs and 8GB RAM, far below the node requirements for most high-performance chains. This low hardware requirement allows lightweight hardware to join the network, avoiding centralization and promoting decentralization.

The launch of Waterfall Network's mainnet and its innovative DAG-based architecture present a new path to blockchain scalability. By separating concerns across the Shard Network and the Coordinating Network, Waterfall can process transactions in parallel while maintaining a global state. Its validator design, which supports a large number of participants with minimal hardware requirements, further enhances its scalability and decentralization. As the blockchain industry continues to evolve, Waterfall Network's approach could serve as a sustainable, alternative base layer for decentralized applications.